Soooooo, when is it okay to start using Flash Heal again?

Since the start of Cata for Holy Priests, like many of the other healing classes, those go-to wrath spells we use to spam, such as Flash Heal, were considered emergency spells, and people sort of looked down upon you if you used Flash Heal a lot throughout a fight. This was all essentially because of the high mana cost for flash heal, and so on.

My question is this: I was with my guild in raid last night, working on a few heroic fights and I ended up using flash heal, quite a bit for some of the encounters. It wasn't like my top spell used or anything, but since the first of Cata, I had to make myself break the habit of using it from healing in Wrath. I changed my spec up the other day for holy and specced into Serendipity, having missed raiding without it, and getting the speedy PoH's off and the occasional speedy GH whenever tanks dipped too low or a dps was in danger of dieing, it was really nice getting to use Serendipity again. I'm just wondering should I be using the spell at all though, flash heal I mean? I guess I should go look at some of the higher progressed holy priests on World of Logs, and see what their spell rotations are looking like for heroic fights. Think I will do that after I make this post . . .

It just seems like "heal" becomes totally useless with the amount of damage going out in heroic encounters. Like the damage is happening so fast, I can sit and try to cast heal on a person taking damage, but another healer will most likely beat me to it, so then I just overheal. Like I'll be assigned to heal the raid, and for the fights we were working on: Magmaw Heroic and Maloriak Heroic, I was in sanctuary chakra state majority of the time, so of course I was using PoH, CoH, PoM, and the occasional renew here and there, and keeping it ticking on tanks . . . but anytime I ever saw one single dps taking damage, flash heal was the best thing to go for instead of just regular old heal. Plus I found myself using flash heal on single targets, to get the speed boost poh when the entire raid was taking damage, or damage was going out sporadically.

Sorry if I'm rambling, just trying to figure this out. I know flash heal was frowned upon for using a lot during fights at the start of Cata, but is it okay to start using it more once you begin working on heroics and have a much better mana regen. Plus we have two resto shammies in our raid healing, so two mana hymns, plus a disc priest, and me the holy priest for mana hymns, etc etc.

Also, I find that its really hard to keep up with Resto droods now on the healing meters. The resto shammies even seem to be more competitive now. I know this is a good thing, because hopefully Blizz is finally figuring things out for the healing classes, but it still makes me feel somewhat irked when I can't keep up with resto shammies and resto droods on encounters, even if the healing difference is very very minimal. Are holy priests suppose to be able to keep up with them??

It's like the joke about knowing how long it takes to bake a potato in the microwave - you cook one 'til it explodes and next time don't cook it so long. If you have the mana to spare, go ahead and work it in until you start to feel mana-constrained and then don't use it so much. If you're running out of mana, use it less and don't worry that someone might beat you on the meters.

Never, unless you got SoL to proc. Otherwise use Binding Heal, it works the same as Flash Heal with the added benefit of keeping you alive.

What if your target is dying and you're at full hp, because that can easily happen. With that said, I sometimes spam 3-4 Flash Heals in a row in order to stabilize a tank who forgot to pop his defensive cd when needed (This is assuming that my Guardian Spirit is on cd or if even my Flash Heal spamming won't save a tank)

What if your target is dying and you're at full hp, because that can easily happen. With that said, I sometimes spam 3-4 Flash Heals in a row in order to stabilize a tank who forgot to pop his defensive cd when needed (This is assuming that my Guardian Spirit is on cd or if even my Flash Heal spamming won't save a tank)

Assuming you are Holy you should only ever use 2 Flash Heals in a row maximum because at that point your next Greater Heal is both cheaper and more powerful than Flash Heal but has the exact same cast time.

You spam heal in mana-conservation parts of fights, where there is very little damage going out. You can flash or binding (if necessary) to keep your serendipity stack up. In high-damage phases you should use your heals as needed to keep your tank/raid up.

-All- of our heals have their place. It's not taboo to flash heal and you shouldn't expect to keep someone alive using only heal. Do what you need to do to keep someone alive and not oom yourself.

If you want to make raiding content harder, turn off DBM. Voila! Your encounters will be much more challenging without bleeps and someone telling you to "run away, little girl."

What if your target is dying and you're at full hp, because that can easily happen. With that said, I sometimes spam 3-4 Flash Heals in a row in order to stabilize a tank who forgot to pop his defensive cd when needed (This is assuming that my Guardian Spirit is on cd or if even my Flash Heal spamming won't save a tank)

That's the beauty, you don't have to worry about whether you are at full health or not. The mana cost is the same. So use Binding Heal even if you are at 100% because something could happen in that 1.21 seconds that you are casting to take damage and you just automatically heal, I mean, reverse the damage. Binding Heal is identical to Flash Heal for stacking Serendipity. Don't spec into Surge of Light, spec into Blessed Resilience. 30% extra healing to you from all sources for 57% of the fight is better that one maybe two free flash heals per fight.

I thought Flash Heals heals your target for more than Binding Heal does? I understand your point about "something could happen in the next 1.21 seconds," but my experiences tell me that fights do exist where incoming damage is easily predictable (like avoiding Halfus fireballs with time warden out or Magmatron flamethrower and Electron is not out - Arcanotron is interruptable and Toxitron is avoidable.) In those cases, in my opinion, Binding Heal's overhealing is just wasted and I'd rather take the slightly stronger Flash Heal. Otherwise, yeah, there are a dozen other fights with random raid damage going all over the place that Binding Heal would be preferred, like for Chimaeron and caustic slime!

What's the point of using flash heal again? By working it out of your used spells, you've become a better healer. Flash heal becoming an emergency heal wasn't a nerf that you're getting gear to surpass, it's an intended change in how healing is done. Unless you NEED to use flash heal, don't.

Although heal and greater heal are generally used,use FH when u need to.
It sounds stupid but it's the truth.
WLK is past tense, things are changing. BLZ is encouraging players to use GH and H, not FH.
go with time, adapt it

It's my understanding that Flash heal is supposed to be used sparingly, and only for emergencies. My OS healing spec used to have flash heal on left mouse click on Healbot, but there's too much mana loss. Heal is more efficient (but slower, still trying to work out healing with the slower one)

Flash heals for around 16-17k and binding heal 12-13k. Flash heal is an emergency spell and should be used as such. You should ONLY be using binding heal if it actually makes sense that being when you want to heal yourself.

Flash heals for around 16-17k and binding heal 12-13k. Flash heal is an emergency spell and should be used as such. You should ONLY be using binding heal if it actually makes sense that being when you want to heal yourself.

I would agree with this, with the caveat that if there is pulsing damage, it is fine to use Binding Heal over Flash since the EoL hot ticking on the priest might be used. I don't know about the rest of you, but I am so used to NOT casting Flash or Binding due to early "triage trauma" healing in Cata, that I don't use it as often as I should. I find myself using Renew in those situations and I shouldn't. 34% base mana for two Renews > than 28% on a Binding Heal. I guess that is what makes this game still interesting, I always see ways where I can improve.